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"Duck for the Oyster, Dig for the Clams" is surely one of the most common traditional square dance figures. There are many examples of this dance on the SDHP website.

Here it's "Duck for Oysters, Dig for Clams." This clip comes from a series of recordings aimed at elementary school age children. The set was arranged and recorded by Joseph V. Burns and Edith S. Wheeler. The liner notes explains that the recordings "are the result of several years' experiments in the field of folk, square and ballroom dancing. They are used in public and private schools, teachers' colleges, playgrounds, recreation centers and community centers in the United States and Canada." The other dances in this volume are: Arkansas Traveler, Spanish Cavalero, The Girl I Left Behind Me, and Camptown Races. Each record contains one side for instructions and one side with the called dance. The calls and music are provided by Walter Finger and His Hired Hands. The clip here includes instructions as well as a little of the actual called dance.

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Fiddler Jay Ungar, seen in the dance footage, writes: "The dances were started by the Concerned Democrats in Putnam County, NY to raise money for the McGovern Campaign in 1972. Lyn Hardy, John Cohen, Abby Newton, Bud Snow, Tom Allen and I were the core band. We were called the Putnam County String Band. John renamed the concert version of our ensemble, the Putnam String County Band.

"I cut my teeth as a dance musician in that band mentored by Bud Snow, a fiddling carpenter. Bud was of PEI heritage and grew up in the English speaking part of southeastern Québec. He had played dances since he was a kid and knew hundreds of tunes.

"The dances were fun, wildly popular community events. Herb Strickland was a truck driver and a classic square dance caller. He was a died-in-the-wool Putnam County local, a descendent of European settlers and local Native Americans. Herb called with our band for the Concerned Democrats and with a Country Western band at the local Volunteer Fire Department dances.

"There were lots of sit ins which occasionally included singer/guitarist Don McLean of eventual 'American Pie' fame. Pete and Toshi Seeger would frequently come to dance. They'd met at a square dance in 1939. You can see them swinging as the dance winds down near the end of this clip.

"McGovern lost the election, but the dances kept going. Too much fun to stop."

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Tiny Clark was one of the callers holding forth at the Village Barn in Greenwich VIllage, New York City. In this 1946 film, he and his band, dubbed the Cactus Cowboys, present three singing squares: Lady Around the Lady, Duck for the Oyster and Dig for the Clam, and Hinky Dinky Parlez Vous. The overall look of the film is hillbilly, with the New York City caller decked out in overalls. This clip only presents the introduction and first time through each of the three dances.

Note: In Lady Around the Lady, Clark calls "Four hands a half, a half right and left." Instead of dancing a right and left through, the dancers circle left halfway, and then back to the right halfway before swinging their partners.

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John Newton was a Vermont teacher and square dance caller. Included here are five examples of his calling.

The first three were recorded by Steve Green in 1984 at John's home (with music by John's band, the Turkey Mountain Window Smashers, including Jill Newton on fiddle and Sally Newton on piano). In his introduction to "My Little Girl," (not included here), John calls it a "neo-traditional" dance, explaining that it dates from about 1940 rather than 1840.

This short biography was written by his daughter Sally, herself a musician and dance caller.
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My dad, John Newton, grew up in Jamaica, Vermont in the 1930s. It was a time when square dancing was in important form of entertainment for many people. In the summertime you could go to a dance every night of the week if you were willing to travel a bit. Wardsboro, Newfane, Windham. and Londonderry are a few of the towns that had dance halls and regular dances. When John was a teenager he and his brother put quite a few miles on the old Model A Ford driving to dances.

Most of the dances were New England squares with singing calls. My dad danced them so many times that later, when he was teaching high school in Chester VT and saw the students were interested in square dancing, he was able to call for them. He invited the students over to our house, which has a big room in it, and taught them to dance. My brother, and I, who were around seven and eight years old, learned as well.

At first my dad called to records. In the early 1970s we put together a band with an old French Canadian fiddler, and several young musicians from the area. The band was called The Turkey Mountain Window Smashers. Turkey Mountain was in our back yard. Smash the Windows is an Irish jig.

Over the years the members of the band changed many times, but John was the caller. He continued to call the New England squares, but enjoyed calling contras as well. He often adapted the singing calls to other tunes so he could call with fiddlers who had a different repertoire. He learned to play the bass because he loved the music and so in his words “he had something to lean on”. He called for community dances, schools, private parties of all kinds, weddings and festivals.

John was a teacher, and this was one form of teaching that he continued to do even as he aged and dealt with illness. He loved to dance. During his life time he brought that love of dancing to many people. I learned much of what I know about dancing and calling from him. The last dance that he called was in October 2012, at the Windham Meeting House, as part of their annual harvest festival. He died this past February.

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Dare To Be Square – Seattle, Washington, 2009

Dare To Be Square is a weekend event celebrating square dancing in its many forms. North Carolina callers Nancy Mamlin and Phil Jamison created the event in 2003 and hosted the first few gatherings at Warren Wilson College in Swannanoa, NC. Subsequent years saw similar events held in Portland, OR, and Seattle. Another DTBS was held in Seattle in 2010, and the John C. Campbell Folk School in Brasstown, NC, hosted one in November of 2011 with support from the Country Dance and Song Society.

Tony Mates uploaded 30 videos from the 2009 Dare To Be Square event in Seattle (December 12-14, 2009). He explains, "My goal was to capture the essence of what Bob Dalsemer brought to his workshops at Dare To Be Square this year, and then make it available to all who participated. A dedicated crew of volunteers and I filled 5 one-hour tapes with video. We attempted to get Bob's teaching of each particular dance, both from the stage and any demonstrations on the floor. We also tried to get a representative sample of the dance being done to the music. As it happens I wish we had covered more material, but then, given the work involved in editing 5 hours of video and 7 of audio, maybe it was for the best. My apologies for the parts that were left out. In particular I'm sorry there was not more of the actual dancing."

"After listening to my audio recordings of the workshops I realized that the video may have captured the main points of each dance, but failed sometimes to give a sense of the whole; particularly as Bob often adds twists—or even new figures—later on in the dance. The audio links below cover the entire workshops, with the exception of Timing! Timing! Timing! which I only got about an hour of."

Tony Mates, March, 2010: "To keep this material from going viral, we ask that you exercise respect and discretion about what you do with it. Since it was the staff and attendees of DTBS 09 who made these videos happen, we'd like to keep it in the family, so to speak. If you know a caller who might benefit from seeing this, fine, but please ask that he or she also respect DTBS and the folks who made it possible." [Note: Tony and Bob granted permission to post these links on this Square Dance History website.]

Credits: "Billie Burlock, Tony Mates, Brittany Newell and Paul Silveria shot video on a camera kindly lent to us by Charlie Beck. Cheers to a very helpful crew! Audio and video editing by Tony Mates. A Noderinksere production. Expert help and counsel from Charmaine Slaven, Charlie Beck, Catherine Alexander, Gabe Strand, Doug Plummer and Johnny Calcagno. And of course many thanks to all of the performers, crew and dancers who made Dare To Be Square 09 happen. Having spent many hours now in front of a laptop watching many of you dance, or call, or play music, it is a pleasure to present this material for your enjoyment and enlightenment."

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Duck for the Oyster - Bob Dalsemer - Maryland Line 5

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This is what might be termed a semi-singing square. Maryland Line caller Jake Jacoby always called Duck for the Oyster to the tune Little Brown Jug (as played by The Sawmill Boys). Note the Georgia Rang Tang/Southern Do-si-do type figure following the main figure and the progression which keeps this visiting couple figure faster moving than normal.

At the Dare To Be Square dance weekend, Bob Dalsemer led a workshop on "Dances of Maryland Line," a small town in northern Maryland that he visited often in the 1970s. Attentive viewers will note the distinctive style of promenade, a one-step around the square that was typical of Maryland Line dances.

This session was recorded on November 19, 2011, at the John C. Campbell Folk School, Brasstown, NC, with additional support provided by Country Dance and Song Society. (Among other things, CDSS paid for the videography, by John-Michael Seng-Wheeler.)

The event brought together six well-known callers and 70 square dance enthusiasts to explore many different styles of squares, including both traditional and modern. The documentation for the weekend includes these videotapes—nearly 100 by the time the whole series is uploaded—plus audio recordings and a syllabus.